The F Watch on the Cannes Film Festival, sexism, and the problematics of auteurism:

If film were to be structured in a more collective sense, particularly financially and especially in terms of public awareness, perhaps there would be a shift in consciousness as to the worth of each artist – because each person working on that film is creating a piece of art, not simply the director. This inward focus on directors as ventured by La Barbe is harming not only the chances of future female directors but also the women working in all areas of film right now.

Amanda Schaffer on Rebecca Jordan-Young's thirteen years of research into the often-spurious findings on pre-natal hormones, neurology, and gender.

I am not alone in thinking that transphobia and feminism are diametrically opposed ideologies. The shift in feminist thinking is firmly on this side. Jeffreys and her ilk are anachronistic curiosities, though loud and dangerous. The trans conspiracy Jeffreys fights is non-existent: in fact, she is attacking a foe far bigger than she can possibly imagine.

A Fringe First winner at Edinburgh 2011, Minsk 2011 is a fast paced and witty portrayal of the daily oppression that many of the cast have experienced in Belarus. Extraordinary stories come to light in this gripping piece of theatre: the communist factory where illegal parties for the gay community are held in secret at night, the government inspector of strippers and police cars disguised as ambulances who arrive to arrest rather than help.

Belarus Free Theatre was founded in 2005 under the Lukashenko dictatorship. Many company members have served time in prison, lost their jobs, gone into hiding or been exiled. Yet the company continues to develop award-winning work with the support of artists around the world, including Tom Stoppard, Steven Spielberg, Kevin Spacey and Vaclav Havel.

Friday, 25 May 2012

[Trigger warning: transphobia. Neither this blog nor the linked posts are transphobic, but they do engage with and discuss transphobic ideas, and it is possible that linked blogs which don't share our safe space policy will have transphobia expressed in their comments section.]

We told you on Monday that our weekly post was going up early because of the urgency of the topic - but now, with another pressing topic begging to be written about it, this week you get a double-dose of Lashings bloggery! Aren't you the luckiest things? So, I'm Orlando - named after the gender-fluid Woolf character, rather than any popular actors - and I'm a newly-ascended fan of Lashings who is still somewhat breathless about joining the team here. Hello!

In mid-May, a London-based 'radical feminist' conference called RadFem2012 was announced, and parts of the internet began to rumble. A few days later, that rumble on Twitter became a roar on the blogosphere. Why all the attention? The website stated that entry was restricted to 'biological women living as women' - later edited to 'women born women living as women' - and renowned transphobe Sheila Jeffreys was billed as a speaker. A week later, and I'm - actually, kind of elated.

For the one or two Australian Lashfans we know are out there (and for anyone else who wants to see gorgeous pictures of gorgeous burlesquers), Va Va Boombah is Melbourne's (possibly Australia's) first fat burlesque show! They also have an inspirational Tumblr here.

Monday, 21 May 2012

This week's post is up earlier than usual, because we're hoping some of you will reply in the comments and we've got limited time in which to take your comments into account.

In Lilka's post last week about the design of our latest poster, she touched on some of the concerns we had about the potential racism in the design process. As she said, the discussion of whether we should use an image of a POC to advertise our show is probably worth a whole blog post to itself, and so this is that post. Because the issues each of us are discussing are closely intertwined, I will be repeating some of Lilka's points in this post, but I'll also be going into more detail about the specific issue of race.

Friday, 18 May 2012

So, we've finalised our poster design for the Fringe festivals we're playing this year. (Reminder: you can still contribute to getting Lashings to Edinburgh, and snap up some awesome goodies, by donating through our Wefund page.) I thought it might be interesting to do a breakdown on how the poster image has been developed, especially since there was a certain amount of Fail during the early stages which we are still processing and trying to learn from. The following post will be quite image-heavy.

Tuesday, 15 May 2012

"Adults who want sex-change surgery or hormone therapy in Argentina will be able to get it as part of their public or private health care plans under a gender rights law approved Wednesday.
The measure also gives people the right to specify how their gender is listed at the civil registry when their physical characteristics don't match how they see themselves.....Any adult will now be able to officially change his or her gender, image and birth name without having to get approval from doctors or judges—and without having to undergo physical changes beforehand, as many U.S. jurisdictions require."

Friday, 11 May 2012

Over the past six years or so, I have run up against a number of the ways in which twenty-first century Western society is set up to assume that people of my age bracket will be partnered or actively looking to be, and have sometimes had bad times as a result (with some irony, a lot of this running-up-against happened while I was actually part of a couple, just not one that operated in the assumed-default mode). Thus, to beginning to think about couples privilege and the privileges associated with coupledom, and to beginning to compile a Couples Privilege Checklist.

This isn't, of course, to suggest that people in couples are all evil, or that there's a giant social conspiracy wherein everyone come up with ways to mess with single people (although if you've met some of my relatives, you might start to have Suspicions...)! However, I do think it's important to look at some of the ways in which our charming heterocentric nuclear-family oriented society creates (or fails to smooth over) obstacles for people who don't fit into the one-man-one-woman-couple model for whatever reason.

I'm deliberately leaving out the sex-and-romance parts of coupledom in this post, and just focusing on the privilege points that affect daily life. A lot of these points are heavily tied to straight or m/f couple privilege, and some of them are tied to class and race privilege as well. I'm also sure that there's a lot of stuff I'm missing, and would appreciate it if anyone is able to point any missed issues out in the comments.

ETA: As andustar pointed out below, many of these privileges also apply only to people in non-abusive relationships.

I should also say that as a sexual/romantic person who has been in relationships (and indeed, is in one now), I've experienced most of these privileges from the 'good' end as well as the pointy one -- I have some brief and transient experience of what might be a much more long-term problem for, eg., an aromantic person.

The final added caveat, of course, is that these are my issues seen from my perspective, and that YM, as ever, MV.

Friday, 4 May 2012

Over the past couple of weeks, several of us have spent a fair amount of time recording some of our favourite Lashings songs. Now, I'm sure at this point you'll be keen to know how you can get your hands on these recordings, so I won't keep you in suspense: anyone who donates £9 or more to our Wefund campaign can have not one, not two, but FOUR Lashings mp3s!

I expect you'll want to go over there and donate now, so I'll wait for you to get back before I continue with this post.

Are you still here? There are lots of other exciting rewards there too, you know!

OK, welcome back.

So, recording was quite an odd experience for me. I've never really done any before (apart from when I was seven, and my friend had a Fisher Price cassette recorder, and we used to pretend to be radio presenters). I was struck by just how different my voice sounds to me when I'm singing live, from how it sounds being played back.

Over on Facebook, Cx Tiara Transience asks: "Who else in the UK - besides Lashings - does similar work? Burlesque for social justice!". We were a bit ashamed of how few answers we could offer, so we're opening it up to you, nice blog-readers. Answer here, or over on our Facebook page.